Blessed Are the Pure in Heart (Matthew 5:8)
Our verse is found in a section from Matthew chapter 5 called “The Beatitudes.” It is part of a bigger section of Christ’s sermons called “the Sermon on the Mount” Jesus has just announced earlier about the Kingdom of Heaven in Matt. 4:17. He also commanded people to repent to enter this kingdom. This was already in contrast to the Pharisees and teachers of the law who taught that there was external righteousness needed to enter the Kingdom of God. It was about keeping the rituals, laws and commandments for the religious leaders. But Jesus just said, “Repent.”
Now as Jesus begins His teaching ministry, many were wondering, "What does it mean to be in the Kingdom of Heaven? " So Jesus begins with the Beatitudes. Some have said these are “attitudes to be.” Notice in the eight beatitudes in Matt. 5:3-11, that the Kingdom of Heaven is mentioned first and last. These are the characteristics of those people who have turned from their kingdom (through repentance) and willingly placed themselves under the rule of King Jesus.
BEATITUDES (Matt. 5:3-12)
WOES (Matt. 23:13-23)
1. Kingdom opened (v.3) 1. Kingdom shut (v.13)
2. Comfort for mourners (v.4) 2. Mourners distressed (v.14)
3. Meek inheriting the earth (v.5) 3. Fanatics compassing the earth (v.15)
4. True righteousness sought by true desire (v.6) 4. True righteousness sought by selfish desire (vv.16-22)
5. The merciful obtaining mercy (v.7) 5. Mercy “omitted” and left “undone” (vv.23-24)
6. Purity within, then vision of God (v.8) 6. Purity outside, uncleanness inside. “Blindness” (vv.25-26)
7. Peacemakers, sons of God (v.9) 7. Hypocrites, lawless (vv.27-28)
8. Persecuted (vv.10-12) 8. Persecutors (vv.29-33)
The Beatitudes are not commandments, though there is authority behind them (since it is from Jesus). They are not requirements to enter the Kingdom. Rather, they show “how a person who is in right relationship with God and in the Kingdom should conduct his life ."
Notice all of the qualities here are internal heart qualities that flows from within -they are the fruit of walking by the Spirit. This is a different message than what the Pharisees taught. The Pharisees were concerned with how loud you prayed, how you looked when you fasted and how much you gave. It was all external. In fact, if you want to ever study the Beatitudes, you should compare them in light of the eight “woes” of Matthew 23:
Sometimes it is better to understand what something means by studying its opposite. By the way, when Jesus says, “Woe!” He means something like “grief, calamity, misery, sorrow,” essentially the opposite of being truly blessed.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” That’s it! That’s the goal of the Christian life! That’s what we are living for – that we may live our life in such a way that we see God. If we see God, it will open up the treasure trove of all the blessings, not only for eternity, but also for life here and now. And the key to open that treasure trove is a pure heart!
This is the most central and the most significant of all the beatitudes mentioned in this fifth chapter of Matthew. You cannot be poor in spirit without having a pure heart. You cannot mourn for the things that displease God without having a pure heart. You cannot be meek, you cannot hunger and thirst for righteousness, you cannot be merciful, you cannot be a peacemaker or be prepared to stand persecution for the name of Christ without having a pure heart. Actually, this is one of the most central principles of the Christian life that we see in the whole Bible. The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.
Let’s look at the meaning of pure in Merriam-Webster:
“Unmixed with any other matter”
When something is pure it is unmixed. For instance, when something is described as being pure gold, that means it is nothing but gold; it has a single ingredient with nothing added. So what is a pure heart?
When we’re pure in heart we seek the Lord only, take Him as our only goal, and have the
accomplishing of God’s will for God’s glory as our only purpose.
What Is It to Have a Pure Heart?
1. Living by the rule of God, living a life that is pleasing to God.
2. Living for the purpose of God, having a single-minded devotion to God.
Having a pure heart first of all means living by the rules of God that bring spiritual purity.
It is easy to follow rules and forget the matter of the heart. We are more careful to keep everything clean - areas that is seen by others and forget about the things that only God can see. If my hands are muddy, nobody would want to shake hands with me, so I better keep them clean. If a preacher was wearing a dirty shirt when he was preaching , you would give more attention to his shirt and not hear what he was saying. We want to keep up appearances before man, but we forget about keeping straight before God.
That is why Jesus’ most scathing rebuke was reserved for the scribes and Pharisees, who thought themselves the purest of all people. They were extremely careful to keep their outward appearance clean before men, but they did not worry about their relationship with God. Jesus told them:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:25-28).
“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).
Quoting Isaiah, Jesus said,
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men’” (Matthew 15:8-9).
Explaining to the disciples, He said,
“Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’…” (Matthew 15:19-20).
This is the impure heart.
However to have a pure heart means to have a heart that is committed to living a life that is totally pleasing to God, because “… the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9). That is why David’s prayer was:
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).
The Greek word employed in our text today carries with it the idea of cleanliness or purity, in the sense that we would commonly understand it. It means to be genuine, free from things that would adulterate something and make it impure; as in the purity of gold. It is similar to the concept of holiness.
When we think of purity of heart, perhaps we think of someone whose motives are pure, who possess no guile or malice. Within the context of what our Lord is saying, He is speaking about the heart of someone whose sins have been forgiven and whose heart has been made new, whose purity comes, not from themselves, but from the presence of Jesus in their lives.
Whenever I think of purity, I always think of milk. Just think about it, a tall glass of clean, white creamy milk; its color testifies to its purity. Now you let some foreign object falls into the milk, say, like a fly and it becomes readily noticeable that this impurity has contaminated the entire glass of milk. Nobody I know wants to drink milk that has had a fly in it. But let someone remove the fly and once again the milk appears to be pure, although there are now impurities in it you cannot see, unseen contaminants that make it impure.
That was the problem of the Pharisees in Jesus' day, and it's the problem with many people today. Their hearts have been contaminated by sins no one else can see, and thus they give the external impression of purity. But within them there is sin that remains uncleansed and continues to contaminate their lives.
Jesus spoke of this in Matthew 23:27-28 when He said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. 28"So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
The standards for citizenship in the kingdom of God are extremely high. External, outward, human righteousness might lead people to think you are pure, but that won't be sufficient with God who sees the heart. God says there has to be an internal work, a transformation at the most basic level, not only of what we do, but of who we are. The sins which stain our hearts need to be washed away and only the blood of Jesus can do that.
Isaiah 1:18 says, "Come now and let us reason together, Says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
You see, within the course of His sermon here, Jesus is saying that the pure in heart are those who are saved and those who have a desire to please God only .
So to be pure in heart speaks to my position as a Christian before God and also to the condition of my walk with God. It does not mean that you and I must be perfect, it does, however mean that we have come to that point where Jesus is firmly established as Saviour and Lord of our lives.
So a pure heart means living by the rules of God, living a life that is pleasing to God.
Secondly, having a pure heart means living for the sole purpose of God, to have a heart that is fully devoted to God. It means single-minded devotion and commitment to God, doing anything and everything in our life for the sole purpose of glorifying God (1 Corinthians 10:31). “Pure” in this sense means unadulterated
.Let me ask you, what is adultery? When we think of adultery, we think of it in the physical sense, having a sexual relation outside the marriage bonds. The Bible does talk about this kind of adultery and certainly prohibits that. However, the Bible talks about spiritual adultery far more than physical adultery. There is a whole book written to deal with the issue of the spiritual adultery of the people of God - the Book of Hosea. There are many chapters in the Old Testament that deal with the spiritual adultery of the people of God, for example, Ezekiel 16 and 22.
In the New Testament, Jesus said you cannot worship God and mammon. When we devote our hearts to anything that is other than the cause of God, we commit spiritual adultery. As James said:
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God … .
Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded (James 4:4, 8).
Both the Old and New Testaments say,
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. This is the first and the greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38; also Deuteronomy 6:5).
This is a pure heart in the spiritual sense.
Jesus said in Matthew, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Now is there a difference between a "clean heart" and a "pure heart"?
A pure heart and a clean heart are not the same. God cleansed our hearts when we accepted the finished work on the cross to forgive us of our sin—past, present, and future. We are made right before God. However, a pure heart does not allow itself to be diverted by things outside God’s will. It does not concern itself with outside options but with clarity of purpose in pleasing God.
King David was crying out for a pure heart-- a heart without mixture. David had a heart after God. He did not want any mixture of the spirit of this world, his flesh or the devil in it. He knew that only God could create such a heart in him. He loved the Word of God and desired nothing more then to obey His God with all his heart, soul and might.
A clean heart implies a dirty heart made clean. Even after many washing, the heart would be clean but not pure. There was a difference and David knew it. Only God could create such a heart--with a single minded, focus on the Lord and His glory.
When Jesus said Jesus "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." what did He mean. It is the mixture of this world, self and the devil that has kept us from seeing more of God. We have been double minded--in love with the world and the Lord at the same time. The book of James says, "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. James 1:8.
What makes our heart mixed?
The Lord’s Word to us is not “blessed are the clean in heart” but “blessed are the pure in heart.” Our heart may be clean, not dirty with sin, but it may not be pure, unmixed, and single toward the Lord. Anything, not just something sinful, can cause our hearts to be impure, or mixed, toward the Lord.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we seek many things besides the Lord Himself, we have other goals besides the Lord, and we aren’t single or absolute when it comes to God’s will being accomplished.
We may still aim at the Lord, but at the same time, we aim at other things. But even physically, it’s hard for our eyes to focus on two objects at the same time. We end up seeing neither object clearly. In the same way, when we focus on things we’re seeking or aiming at and not on Christ only, it’s hard for us to see God in our fellowship with the Lord.
For instance, things in the world such as wealth, success, material objects, and entertainment can attract our hearts. And when we seek them, our heart is impure toward the Lord. Often we don’t even realize our heart has become divided until we notice how dry and unhappy we’ve become, and how far away the Lord seems.
Perhaps the goal of obtaining a certain kind of degree or career claims more of our heart, and we’re no longer undivided in our loving and seeking of the Lord Jesus. Maybe we even ask the Lord to help us obtain our goal, not realizing we’ve lost sight of accomplishing His will. And although having such a goal perhaps isn’t sinful, when it becomes our main goal in life, it distracts us from seeking the Lord Himself as our goal.
Even seemingly spiritual things can make our heart impure. For example, studying the Word to know many things in the Bible may become the goal in our heart, rather than knowing the Lord Himself. Or we may pursue good conduct, or take good works as our goal—even in service to God—rather than the Lord only.
Being pure in heart involves having a singleness of heart toward God. A pure heart has no hypocrisy, no guile, no hidden motives. The pure heart is marked by transparency and an uncompromising desire to please God in all things. It is more than an external purity of behavior; it is an internal purity of soul.
The only way we can be truly pure in heart is to give our lives to Jesus and ask Him to do the cleansing work. Psalm 51:10 says, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” God is the one who makes our hearts pure – by the sacrifice of His Son and through His sanctifying work in our lives (see also 1 John 3:1-3).
How to be pure in heart
Because we’re fallen, we’re all susceptible to having a mixed heart. That’s why it’s so important for us to have daily time with the Lord. As we spend time in the Lord’s presence, He is faithful to enlighten us concerning any sins we need to confess to Him. But in addition to confessing our sins to Him and experiencing His forgiveness and washing, we can pray for our hearts to be made not just clean, but pure, so that we seek Him only. We can allow Him to show us anything that distracts us from Him by praying like this:
“Lord, save me from having a mixed heart. Purify my heart. Show me anything in my heart, good or bad, that has become my goal or aim besides Your dear Person. Show me anything that competes with You for the focus of my heart. Lord, make my heart pure toward You and Your will. I love You, Lord.”
As the Lord purifies our hearts, we will experience one of the greatest blessings—we will see more of who He is and know Him in a deeper way. What a joy it is to see God!
The first thing we learn from this beatitude is that Jesus is concerned with our heart. It is not enough to clean up our act on the outside.
The aim of Jesus Christ is not to reform the manners of society , but to change the hearts of sinners like you and I . So, for example, Jesus would not be satisfied with a society in which there were no acts of adultery.
You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27–28)
The heart is what you are, in the secrecy of your thought and feeling, which nobody knows but God. And what you are at the invisible root matters as much to God as what your are at the visible branch. "Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). From the heart are all the issues of life.
What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart . . . For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man. (Matthew 15:18–19)
Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit . . . For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (Matthew 12:33–34)
So the heart is utterly crucial to Jesus. What we are in the deep, private recesses of our lives is what He cares about most. Jesus did not come into the world simply because we have some bad habits that need to be broken. He came into the world because we have such dirty hearts that need to be purified.
So let's ask briefly in the moments we have,
1. What is it to see God?
2. What is it to be pure in heart? And,
how are these two things bound together?
First, "to see God" means to be admitted to his presence. After the plague of darkness on Egypt, Pharaoh exploded to Moses with these words:
"Get away from me; take heed to yourself; never see my face again; for in the day you see my face you shall die." Moses said, "As you say! I will not see your face again." (Exodus 10:28–29)
When a king says, "You will never see my face again," he means, "I will never grant you admission again into my presence."
So the first thing " seeing God " means is being admitted to his presence.
Second, seeing God means being awestruck by his glory—by a direct experience of his holiness. After God confronted Job in the whirlwind, Job said, "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Job 42:6
Virtually all of our spiritual sight in this life is mediated to us through the Word of God or the work of God in providence. We "see" images and reflections of his glory. We hear echoes and reverberations of his voice.
But there will come a day when God himself will dwell among us. His glory will no longer be inferred from lightning and mountains and roaring seas and constellations of stars. Instead our experience of him will be direct. His glory will be the very light in which we move (Revelation 21:23) and the beauty of his holiness will be tasted directly like honey on the tongue.
So seeing God means not only being admitted to his presence, but also being awestruck by a direct experience of his glory.
Finally, seeing God means being comforted by his grace. Again and again the psalmists cry out to God that he not hide his face from them. For example in Psalm 27 (verses 7–9)
David says,
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
. . . Hide not thy face from me.
"Hide not thy face from me," is the same as saying, "Be gracious to me!" This means that seeing the face of God is considered to be a sweet and comforting experience. If God shows his face, we are helped. If he turns his face away, we are dismayed.
So when Jesus promises the reward of "seeing God" there are at least these three things implied:
(a) We will be admitted to his presence,
(b) We will be awestruck with a direct experience of his glory.
(c) And we will be helped and comforted by his grace.
And this we will have—in part now, and fully in the age to come—if we are pure in heart.
Let me try to show the meaning of "pure heart" from in Scripture. We start with the closest OT parallel to this beatitude, namely, Psalm 24:3–4.
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false,
and does not swear deceitfully.
You can see what David means by a "pure heart" in the phrases that follow it. A pure heart is a heart that has nothing to do with falsehood. It is painstakingly truthful and free from deceitfulness. Deceit is what you do when you will two things, not one thing. You will to do one thing and you will that people think you are doing another. You will to feel one thing and you will that people think you are feeling another. That is impurity of heart. Purity of heart is to will one thing, namely, to "seek the face of the Lord" (verse 6).
You can also see this idea of purity in James 4:8.
Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind.
Notice that just like Psalm 24 there is reference to both clean hands and a pure heart as preparation for drawing near to God, or "ascending the hill of the Lord." But notice how the men are described who need to purify their hearts - "men of double mind." That is they are men that will two things not just one thing.
The impurity of double-mindedness is explained in James 4:4.
Unfaithful creatures Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
So the double-minded man of verse 8 has his heart divided between the world and God, like a wife who has a husband and a boyfriend. Purity of heart on the other hand is to will one thing, namely, full and total allegiance to God - Ps. 78:1,8,37.
So if we ask, Where in the gospels did Jesus explain purity of heart in this way? the answer would be Matthew 22:37,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.
Not with part of your heart and not with divided heart. That would be impurity. Purity of heart has no deception, no double-mindedness, no divided allegiance.
(Note: you can see the echo of this meaning of purity of heart in 1 Timothy 1:5, "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. [i.e., unhypocritical ].")
Purity of heart is to will one thing, namely, God's truth and God's value in everything we do. The aim of the pure heart is to align itself with the truth of God and magnify the worth of God. If you want to be pure in heart, pursue God with utter single-mindedness. Purity of heart is to will that one thing.
That leaves one last question:
Jesus only gives us part of the answer here. He says that the pure will see God. That is, purity is a prerequisite for seeing God. The impure are neither granted admittance to his presence, nor are they awed by the glory of his holiness, nor are they comforted by his grace.
Jesus' point is the same as Hebrews 12:14, "and to be holy, without holiness no one will see the Lord." In other words, blessed are the holy for they shall see God. There is a real purity and a real holiness which fits us to see the king of glory.
Holiness is foreign to us. It is alien. That is why we require the righteousness of another to cover our moral nakedness. The Lord has given us the holiness we need in the cloak of Christ’s righteousness.
And of course that leads every sensitive soul to cry out with the words of Proverbs 20:9, "Who can say, 'I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin?'" And with the disciples: "Who then can be saved?" Matt. 19: 25
Jesus' answer is mentioned in Matthew 19:26—"With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." In other words, God creates a purity for us and in us so that we can pursue purity. And by his grace we must seek that gift by praying with David, "Create in me a clean heart, O God" (Psalm 51:10). And we must look to Christ "who gave himself for us . . . to purify for himself a people" (Titus 2:14). Purity of heart is the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who are submissive to His leading and guidance.
And the response of our hearts to God's act of creation and Christ's act of sacrifice is single-minded faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. As the Scripture says in Acts 15:9, "God made no distinction between us and them, but purified their hearts by faith." God is the one who purifies the heart, and the instrument with which he cleans it is faith.
Therefore, trust in the Lord with all your heart (Proverbs 3:5). Will this one thing. And you will see God.
Now the question is how can we have a pure heart ? A heart that is fully devoted to God?
First of all, we have to realize that we, in and of ourselves, cannot attain a heart that is morally and spiritually pure and fully devoted to God. As the Bible repeatedly tells us, “The Lord saw … that every inclination of the thoughts of his [man’s] heart was evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). As the prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Although it is impossible for us to have a pure heart in and of ourselves, we can have a pure heart by the grace of God. What is impossible for man is possible for God. A pure heart is a gift from God, and it comes by a new birth, by a new creation, and by the Spirit living in us and our submission to the Spirit.
God had promised in the Old Testament through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33), and “I will give them singleness of heart and action” (Jeremiah 32:39). This was finally fulfilled in and through Jesus Christ, Who makes us a new creation with a new heart (2 Corinthians 5:17).
There are ways we can maintain the purity of our heart, and one of the most primary is our time in the Word of God. As the psalmist said, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word” (Psalm 119:9), and, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).
A second way to maintain the purity of our heart is through fellowship with the people of God. It helps to be accountable to one another. Solomon said:
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up! (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).
That is why the author of the Book of Hebrews exhorts us, “Let us consider how we can spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).
Thirdly, we can train our heart for pure living by doing the works of God. As we are involved in His service and as God uses us for the blessing of others, we are encouraged towards our devotion to God and to keeping our hearts morally pure.
How do we know if someone has a pure heart? The pure heart is evidenced by the way we live. As Peter says, a person devoted to the Lord “does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:2).
Purity of heart is a work in progress in which both God and man share responsibility. Many scriptures show that God will cleanse by pardoning sin. But our responsibility in cleansing is very important and frequently mentioned along with what we must do to be cleansed. Notice how clearly James shows purifying is our responsibility: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (James 4:8).
How is this purifying done? I Peter 1:22 makes a summary statement: "Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart." Obedience to the truth through the Spirit purifies our character by inculcating right habits within it.
After commanding us to clean ourselves up, Isaiah adds, "Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:16-17). Likewise, after admonishing us to guard our heart, the scriptures say:
"Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil." (Proverbs 4:24-27)
Jeremiah 4:14 adds, "O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?"
To meet these qualifications requires "truth in the inward parts" (Psalm 51:6). A deceitful heart will never meet the standards because it does not operate from a foundation of godly integrity. David says in verse 5 that, humanly, he was shaped in iniquity. God, with our cooperation through faith, is ultimately the Creator of a pure heart in us, but it is a protracted process achieved by imparting a holy nature by His Spirit. This unites us with a holy Christ, with whom we fellowship, washing us in the blood of the Lamb so that with His aid we can mortify the flesh and live toward God, giving Him first priority in everything.
We will never be pure in this life as God is pure. Our purity is at best only in part. We are partly purified from our former darkness; our will is partly purified from its rebellion; our desires are partly purified from desires, avarice and pride. But the work of cleansing has begun, and God is faithful to finish what He starts (Philippians 1:6).
Interestingly, when Peter refers to God's calling of Gentiles in Acts 15:9, he says God "made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith." He uses "purifying" in the sense of a continuous experience. In Titus 3:5, Paul also uses "renewing of the Holy Spirit" in the same ongoing sense. By daily denying the self, sincerely confessing and wholehearted obedience, we work toward purity.
However, it is not enough to be pure in words and outward conduct. Purity of desires, motives, and intents should characterize the child of God. We need to examine ourselves, searching diligently whether we have freed ourselves from the dominion of hypocrisy. Are our affections set on things above? Has the fear of the Lord grown strong enough that we love what He loves and hate what He hates? Are we conscious of and do we deeply grieve over the filth we yet find within ourselves? Are we conscious of our foul thoughts, vile imaginations, evil desires? Do we mourn over our pride? Perhaps the heaviest burden of a pure heart is seeing the ocean of unclean things still in him, casting its filth into his life and fouling what he does.
Purity of heart is to have one aim in life and that is that we may live for God. David summed it up with these words from Psalm 27:4, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple“ (Psa. 27:4). It is precisely for this reason that the pure in heart will see God. God is the sole object of their search in life. He is their aim, their goal, and their delight.
In these days, hearts seek after many things. People may pretend that they are seeking God with all their heart and with all their strength, but often the telltale signs betray their true motives. Purity of heart deals with motives and hidden purposes. The writer of Proverbs says, “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters…” (Prov. 20:5). Yet, the Lord knows man’s heart and carefully deals with it. The scripture says, “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the heart“ (Prov. 17:3).
The bible in describing the life of Amaziah says , “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, but not wholeheartedly“ (2 Chron. 25:2). Imagine that! It is possible even to do the right things and have a wrong heart. God examines the heart. When God sent Samuel to look for his chosen king, the prophet thought God was looking for a man with outstanding appearance and stature. The prophet looked upon one of the sons of Jesse, thinking that he must surely be the chosen king. At last God said to the prophet, “…Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.“ (1 Sam. 16:7).
Young David was chosen by God, and he went on to become not only the greatest king Israel ever had, but he became the greatest seeker after God. With his life he defined purity of heart in a way it had not been defined before. It was not that David lived a sinless life. He probably sinned worse than many people in the church today, but he always came running back after God, even in tears of remorse.
If we desire a perfect heart – a pure heart, we must ask for it like David did. He said, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting“ (Psa. 139:23-24). We must gain the courage to face our real selves and take a hard look at our true motives. We are not fooling God, and chances are that we are not fooling as many people as we think. We must be willing to open up our inmost beings to the thorough searching of God, without fear and in simple faith. We must let God examine and change our real motives. Those hidden drives and ambitions and those dark secrets of our lives must be brought to the light. This whole process is known as repentance.
Moses dealt with this very matter when he challenged Israel: “Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer“ (Deut. 10:16). God wants to do a deep and personal work in us. He desires to get past the outward, fleshly things into the inner man of the heart – into the area of desires, goals, loves, and aims of life.
We read in scripture a very unflattering assessment of the heart of man in its natural state. The scripture says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?“ (Jer. 17:9) But God says, “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve“ (Jer. 17:10). The natural heart of man is bent on evil, but God desires to give each of us a new heart – a pure heart. God desires that we have a spiritual “heart transplant.” The Lord says in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.“
As Christians we call this the new birth, and we believe it comes by accepting Jesus and allowing him to take up residence within our innermost being. It was for this purpose that he died. He “…gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Tit. 2:14).
Once we have called upon the Lord as David did, and circumcised our hearts as Moses bade us do, God wants us to progress on in purity. “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God“ (2 Cor. 7:1); “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure“ (1 John 3:3).
God desires that we keep our hearts and minds fixed upon him, upon that which is pure (Phil. 4:8). Such a one may ascend to the hill of the Lord and may stand in his holy place. He or she is the one who has clean hands and a pure heart (Psa. 24:33-4). This one shall see God and live in his presence forever. This one, above all people on earth, will be truly blessed and happy.
Now does God desire a moral people; No!! He desires a holy people. You ask: ‘Is there really a difference between the two?’ There is most certainly. It is the difference between the Pharisees – the most zealous of the parties of ancient Judaism during the late Second Temple period – and the Lord Jesus Christ.
They were moral; He was holy.. We shall examine this idea for a short time.
The Christian worldview is based on two foundational axioms:
1) God exists, and
2) God has spoken to us in the Bible.
These two presuppositions are the starting point in a Christian worldview,
The Bible states that man was created in God’s image. Part of that image makes man a moral being. We are moral agents who make moral choices and are able to differentiate between right and wrong. The basis upon which we differentiate between right and wrong is our knowledge of God’s law, and that knowledge comes from two sources—revelation and conscience.. God gave a commandment to Adam and Eve in the Garden. He gave Ten Commandments to the Israelites after the exodus in Sinai, and Jesus boiled those Ten Commandments down to two essential commandments—love God and love your neighbor. All of these represent God’s revelation of His law, which is simply a reflection of His moral character to His people.
The Bible also says that God wrote His law on our hearts (Romans 2:15). This is conscience. In other words, even without God’s revelation in the commandments, we intuitively know God’s law based on the fact that we were created in His image. However, due to the fall (Genesis 3), that image is marred and disfigured and this includes our conscience. So even though we know God’s law through our conscience, we tend to distort it to our advantage. That is why we need revelation.
What happens if the Christian doesn’t turn to the Bible as his or her source for morality? There are many ways to answer this question, but the bottom line is we all tend to trust our conscience, whether implicitly or explicitly. The human conscience can be likened to an alarm system; it warns us when we transgress our moral standard. The catch is our conscience is only as good as the moral standard that informs it. If it’s not the Bible, then we inevitably inform our conscience by various other means. And very often our conscience is distorted by the standards of the society around us.
The current reigning “competitor” to biblical morality in our society is social consensus. In other words, our morality is shaped and changed by the culture around us. Social consensus is just that—a consensus. It’s a picture of the general social standards of the day. A generation or two ago, homosexuality, divorce and adultery were not accepted, even considered sinful. Now, both homosexuality and divorce are normal and adultery isn’t as stigmatized as it once was. Basically, what we have with social consensus is what happened to the Israelites a couple generations after conquering the Promised Land: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6 and compare with 1Sam. 8:5 ...give us a king to lead us, the same as all the other nations have.) The people abandoned God, and within two generations after the death of Joshua they were doing what was evil in the sight of God. Why? because they want to be like the other nations.
By definition morality is the distinction between right and wrong. It is the determination of what should be done and what should not be done. Morals deal with behavior as well as motives.
Morality is preoccupation with the external behaviour. Holiness, by contrast, deals with the inward thoughts of our hearts.
One may describe the difference as follows: the moral person abstains from wrong actions … the holy person hates the very thought of wrongdoing. The moral person is preoccupied by what people perceive him to be … the holy person is consumed with what God wants him to be. The moral person adheres to a list of dos and don'ts … the holy person ponders what brings greatest pleasure to his heavenly Father.
The moral person lives by a definition of right and wrong. The holy person yields to the Word of God as the final authority, which, in turn, compels him to guard the silences of the Bible and, therefore, honor the freedoms these allow among those who serve the same Savior. Holiness, not morality, is God's desire for His people . The writer of the book of Hebrews says in 12:14 ...and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord," and this is what is meant by the beatitude "blessed are the pure...for they shall see God.
